Technicalities of life

Having got my car back, and then been away to see Mum & Dad last weekend, I spent the past week gradually coming to terms with life and several busy evenings, including uni, comedy, friends visiting, winning a music pub quiz (as part of a team obviously). I also found time to get a new phone as the old one died. I was also out for inner tonight, which was especially nice.

I am thus now part of the iPhone 3G group... first impressions are very good but it did require iTunes, which for some reason my laptop wouldn't install due to a 'corrupted user area. Thus I backed up all my stuff and created anew user area on the laptop, only taking about 5hours. I also tidied my contcat lists, and sorted out my files on the PC whilst all this was happening, so it wasn't wasted.

Having found out how to copy my mail settings across, I can now sync my diary on the pc with the one on my phone...which is kinda cool. I still need to work out how to use teh full functionality of the iPod part of the phone, but that requires an understanding of iTunes.which may have to wait for another day.

This week looks to be another one with several late finishes, with an 'academic meeting. tomorrow, the music quiz on wednesday, an ICU night out on Thursday and then an invitation to Cheesy Pop on Friday night. The quiz doesn't start til about 9, so is a useful post uni, midweek chance to catch up with friends, and demonstrate our lack of knowledge, and eat/drink our winnings from last week.

Happiness and regrets

Well today my 04 intake got their exam results, and everyone I have heard from passed. If I had passed 3rd year the first time around I'd be with them, and looking forward to becoming a Doctor in August, a career, money, success and a long summer holiday. So I;m really pleased for all them, twinged with a slight regret that I won;t be with them, and that I have another 12 months work and graft until (hopefully) I can also add MBChB after my name.

I hope they are nice next year when we students are on their wards.

Graduating a year early?

You might think that of all the people to keep track of what year of a Uni course a student is in, that the University registry might be pretty clued up.

And yet, myself and other students who have either missed a year, repeated a year or taken time out due to illness, and thus despite an 04 (or 03) matric number, will be graduating in 2010 not 2009, all received the following this week.
As yet they have not responded to my email. I wonder if i can graduate this year and thus avoid having to sit exams in 2010. Thought not.

Housekeeping or the house and uni

Well in this weekend between blocks, I tried to be productive... after taking the car to the garage early on Saturday (such a short night) I decided to start cleaning the kitchen, including scrubbing the hob, scrubbing, hoovering and mopping the laminate floor throughout the living area, cleaning my desk, scrubbing the bathroom, and then hoovering the bedroom and tidying everything away from the bedroom surfaces I felt that things were going better, so on Sunday I printed all the Uni notes I did not recollect printing and found the matching lecture notes from this year and started filing them. Despite lectures only once every 5 weeks, the pile already almost fills a ring binder.

The notes on clinical skills are less organised because due to the nature of this year, they become more integrated into normal notes... I need to work out how to formalise and organise the notes from placements as well into a form from which I can revise when the time comes.

SSm starts tomorrow

In a follow up to this, tomorrow I start my SSM at DepCat hospital in ICU.

It is an audit, and now I have a title, a topic, and a pile of reading at tall as a house! I also have a questionnaire I composed to gather the data and now need to design a spreadsheet to put it all into. In some ways a database might be more useful, but I;m not sure how to extract data from that and this needs to be more about the data than the process. It is essentially a 'paper' audit with no actual changes to practice in the unit until we reach some conclusions, but could involve going back through 720 patient records (or 300 patient notes) hopefully though this might be nice and easy and come in a spreadsheet itself from the labs.

Although I did my ssm in ICU before christmas, thatw a s abig city ICU with tertiary centres, and high level professorial input. This next one is a much smaller unit, with more paper based recrds, so it may be something of a change. For a start not all the staff wear scrubs....and I might not get to either.

The exodus continues

well in the past 2 years, since I left my lace of work the first time, the rats have been leaving the sinking..... sorry other colleagues have been leaving. First Stefan, then Gstar, Chris, Sarah, and now Butcher Boy. This leaves the tattooed drinker and little Miss P holding the fort, although they have now been joined by some new people...

So Friday night became Butcher Boy's second leaving night...he is maintaining a watching brief by getting his flatmate to work there though.

Time to recharge the batteries

My car is ill.... on Friday a red light came on indicating that I had ignition problems... I managed to keep it going until Saturday morning, as the lights got dimmer and dimmer, and then managed to coast it to the local Ford dealer on Saturday who said they would look at it and get back to me, but most likely the link from alternator to engine had gone - apparently this is common in Ka's. However the Ka has also done almost 12000 miles since I got it in August (see here) and needs a serrvice.. so this little episode may not be cheap........

Ethics in psychiatry

Wow well Psych turned out to get a bit busier towards the end than I had anticipated. I ended up completing all 4 case sin the final week, and had to adapt one of them to fit the demands of the Uni ethics case.

However, like many others I worry that I have done the ethics case wrong. The guidance notes seemed to refer to patient safety stuff and us seeing staff doing things wrong and how this could affect the patients prognosis and outcome.

Mine focuses more on the issues to do with a 17yr old with prodromal posychoses and self-harm but who contninues to abuse large quantities of illicit drugs, and for whom pharmacotherpay is bcoming elss effective as he takes more drugs to achieve the high he wanted.

I linked this to teh situation of heart disease, and the fact that medics and GPS continue to give statins and anti-hypertensives een though people continue to eat badly, exercise poorly, and drink and smoke mroe. Thus I reasoned the illicit drugs were only different ebcause they were illegal, but that such isuses shuould not affect patient care.

However from the otehr side, if the pharmaco-therapy is meaning that the patient is taking more illicit drugs (with no quality control sapling etc) then it puts him at greater risk of adverse side effects and making his psychiatric condition worse, so maybe in the interest of non-malifience we should cut back his treatment.

In the end I came to no clear view........but in my experience psychiatry was all about discussing the options and not coming to a decision......

Sorry for being away

Where did February go?

Mostly in a haze of youth group stuff, psychiatry at Uni - of which more later and sleeping - for some reason I am absolutely shattered this block!